When the "Eldritch Realms" DLC dropped for Age of Wonders 4, the developers also released a free patch called the Mystic Update. This update included a few balancing updates, but the highlight was a retooling of the Mystic culture.
As of the Mystic Update, all Mystic cultures in Age of Wonders 4 can belong to one of three "Schools." Each School has a major impact on how the Mystic culture plays, at least when it comes to spells (both tactical and strategic). Each School comes with a basic description of its abilities, but there's more to each one than what the tooltips tell you.
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The Attunement School
According to the patch notes, the Attunement School is the closest to how the Mystic culture worked before the update. As such, every custom Mystic culture you created before the update will default to the Attunement School. You'll need to edit the culture if you want to switch to one of the other two schools. On the other hand, you can find at least one of each type of Mystic School among the default rulers.
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Units of the Attunement School culture get a special ability called Attunement: Star Blades. Every time you or an ally cast a tactical spell, a unit with Star Blades will gain a +1 damage bonus (+2 for a single-hit attack) based on the Affinity of the spell. Star Blades stacks up to three times per damage type and lasts for three rounds, and each time you use the same spell Affinity, the timer resets. By juggling several Affinities, you can potentially give every unit on your side a significant damage boost.
- Astral: Lightning
- Chaos: Fire
- Materium: Physical
- Nature: Blight
- Order: Spirit
- Shadow: Frost
- The Attunement School can research the Scroll of Attunement world spell, which lets you give the Star Blades buff to all allied units.
The Attunement School also gets access to a unique global resource called Astral Echoes. You can use Astral Echoes to replace World Map Casting Points and Combat Casting Points, allowing you to cast more spells in and out of combat. Each Astral Echo is worth one Casting Point. Sources of Astral Echoes include:
- Special Astral Echo pickups on the world map. Each pickup is worth 20 Astral Echoes, and they respawn as the game continues. Only Attunement and Summoning School empires can see and collect these pickups.
- Each time you complete an Arcane Research project, you get 20 times the project's skill level. That means 20 for a skill level one project or 80 for a skill level four project.
- Attunement School empires can research the spell Astral Divination, which costs 300 Casting Points but spawns several Astral Echoes around your controlled provinces.
- After building the Town Hall 3 upgrade, you can build the Altar of the All-Seers, a city structure that provides a passive 10 Astral Echoes per turn and gives units from the city +2 vision range and True Sight.
To use Astral Echoes for a strategic spell, start casting a spell that needs more World Map Casting Points than you have available. In the upper-left corner of the spell's symbol (where the "Favorite" star usually is) you should see a set of green arrows. Click on the arrows to spend your Astral Echoes and complete the spell.
To use Astral Echoes on a combat spell, you'll need to spend all your Combat Casting Points until you don't have enough left to cast a spell. If you try to cast a spell anyway, the game will ask you if you want to spend Astral Echoes.
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The Potential School
This school's combat effect is based around Dissonance and Overcharge.
- Each time a unit of this culture attacks, they hit the enemy with Dissonance. Each attack applies it separately, and so a single unit can inflict three stacks of DIssonance in a single turn. Up to five stacks of Dissonance can affect a unit at once.
- You can also research Ciphers of Dissonance, a Unit Enchantment that lets allied Battle Mage and Support units inflict Dissonance.
- When you cast a spell affected by Overcharged Spell, every stack of Dissonance across the battlefield goes off and deals 4 lightning damage per stack.
- The first combat spell cast by a Potential School player has Overcharged Spell applied automatically.
- Another way to get an Overcharged Spell is with the Overcharge Cast ability, which is a Battle Magic hero skill available to any empire.
Because of the differences between Attunement and Potential, there's a basic difference in how you should conduct combat each turn:
- Attunement School players should cast their combat spell first, then move their units.
- Potential School players should move their units, then finish by casting a combat spell.
The second difference is called Arcane Inspiration.
- Each time you finish a combat encounter, win or lose, every Combat Spell you cast during the encounter gains one Potential.
- Each time you cast a World Map Spell, that spell gains one Potential.
- Another way to gain Potential is with the city structure "Academy of Potential." Like the Altar of the All-Seers, the Academy of Potential unlocks after you reach Town Hall 3, and it gives you +1 Potential to a random spell every turn. It also gives the city's Support and Battle Mage units +1 to their starting rank.
- Once a spell gains three Potential, you can gain a lasting benefit by locking access to the spell for 10 turns. You can't cast the spell at any point during these turns, but you'll gain a resource boost until it unlocks.
- The effect of the boost depends on the tier of the spell. For instance, locking a tier-two spell away can give you +6 vision range to all units, while a tier-six spell can give you +60 Knowledge per turn. Spells without tiers (rituals, Wizard Tower spells) give you no benefit for locking them.
- The level of Arcane Inspiration is visible in the upper-right corner of the spell's icon in your spellbook. If it says "3," you can click on the number to lock the spell and gain the listed benefit. The number is replaced by a padlock while the Arcane Inspiration is active.
- You can gain Arcane Inspiration from the same spell multiple times, but each time the benefit is randomized. You can also lock as many spells as you like at any one time. However, you can't unlock a spell early if you realize you made a mistake.
The last major difference is in the school's Affinity. The Potential School has one Shadow Affinity and one Astral Affinity, while the other two schools are two Astral.
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The Summoning School
As the name implies, the Summoning School is all about bringing in Magic Origin units and making them stronger than your home-grown versions. Note that "Magic Origin" includes any unit that costs Mana as upkeep, so a Summoning School culture with mixed Affinities will still work out just fine.
- Magic Origin units get the ability Attunement: Astral Resonance, which gives the unit one stack of Strengthened (+10 percent damage) and 10 temporary hit points every time you or an ally casts a spell.
- Regular units get the ability Astral Connection, which gives Magic Origin units +5 Morale for each normal unit of your culture in the battle.
This makes the Summoning School much more straightforward in battle than the other two. After all, the school expects you to spend all your Mana on world-map turns bringing in summoned units, not on Combat Spells.
The Summoning School also gets access to Astral Echoes, just like the Attunement School. The methods you can use to gain them are identical, but the way you spend them is completely different. Instead of spending Astral Echoes to finish casting spells, you can spend them to improve your Magic Origin units.
- When you Inspect a Magic Origin unit, you'll see a new button on the right called "Promote." You can press the button and spend the listed number of Astral Echoes to instantly increase the unit's experience rank by one level.
- Each experience point is worth three Astral Echoes, and you always buy just enough experience to reach the next rank. So if a unit needs 8 more XP to rank up, the Promote button will ask for 24 Astral Echoes.
- If you have enough Astral Echoes to Promote a unit, you'll see the Astral Echoes symbol in the upper-left corner of the unit's icon.
- The unique Summoning School building is the Summoners' Cistern, which simply provides +30 Mana per turn. You'll need it to support all your Magic Origin units.
Something worth pointing out is that the Mystic Update also rebalanced the low-tier units. A tier one or two unit that has reached the Champion or Legend experience rank can hold its own against a tier four or five unit. This means you can get some impressive results fast by spending your Astral Echoes on one or two Magic Origin units, even if they start out as a lowly tier one.
The Mystic Update gives the Mystic culture much more to play with, and as of the "Eldritch Realms" release, it's the only culture with a subgroup. However, if this change proves popular, it may end up being the first example of a more nuanced system.
Age Of Wonders 4
- Released
- May 2, 2023
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Triumph Studios
- Publisher(s)
- Paradox Interactive
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Genre(s)
- Turn-Based Strategy
